Reality Bites the TV Show Is a Terrible Idea

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Ben Stiller has chosen to make Reality Bites into a network TV show because, well, of course he has.

While it's not unusual, as we get older, to see pieces of our formative years dredged up by the tides of an uninspired culture machine looking for the next trend wave to ride — I mean, c'mon, jelly shoes and bondage pants have both had a resurgence — this hits particularly close to home. Maybe because, unlike the zaniness of Clerks or underground vibes of Slacker, Reality Bites was the first, and in a lot of ways best, mass-market film aimed specifically at my friends and me, with characters that, even though obviously contrived in some ways, we could all relate to, at least a little bit. Characters who typecast their respective actors for the rest of their careers and left an imprint on their actual lives as well.

Winona Ryder is the valedictorian-cum-aspirational documentary maker who flicks cigarettes into passing cars and ultimately runs off with the wrong, and by wrong I mean right, guy. Who is, of course, Ethan Hawke. Playing himself. Jeneane Garofalo? There's a solid chance she's working at a Gap right now. Okay, she's probably not. But at the same time, would it really shock you that much? And Ben Stiller, well... Ben plays a middle-management television executive who takes Ryder's documentary and sells it for her, in the process completely sucking any artistic vision and soul from the finished project.

While you could almost argue that this is the logical, meta conclusion to Reality Bites, based on the mid-ending credits scene in which Stiller's character has co-opted the movie's storyline into, guess what, a shitty TV show, I refuse to accept it. I refuse to believe that it's anything but Stiller, who, while wildly talented, is probably dying to do anything that isn't _______ the Fockers, grasping at straws in an attempt to appear as though he has something to offer creatively besides Madagascar sequels and the forthcoming Zoolander 2.

And though Stiller isn't, as Hawke's character states in the movie, "under any orders to make the world a better place," he is, by nature of being a big deal of an actor and director, at least nominally bound to a social contract that he will attempt to produce quality material to entertain us. Which he isn't doing by dredging up what is sure to be a nostalgia-pandering, cliché-ridden made-for-TV reboot that will make a whole generation of people groan in their organic soy lattes. It's ironic that the one '90s era TV show everyone has always wanted to see come back, the Claire Danes-introducing My So-Called Life, never has, yet in just this summer we've been greeted with the Reality Bites TV show and a "spiritual sequel" to Dazed and Confused.